Download Name: Period: Date: Ghosts of Mississippi Description: This film

Name:
Period:
Date:
Ghosts of Mississippi
Description: This film recounts the retrial and conviction of the assassin of Civil Rights leader
Medgar Evers, some 30 years after the murder.
Rationale: Ghosts of Mississippi provides students a deeper look into the Civil Rights
Movement by illustrating the dangers of Civil Rights work and the legal system in Mississippi in
the segregationist 1960’s. It shows a widow’s perseverance and crusade for justice, as well as a
prosecutor’s commitment to righting an old wrong. The film also describes Mississippi’s shift
over time from a state known for racism to one that would afford justice to the family of a slain
Civil Rights activist.
Objectives: Ghosts of Mississippi affords students from which to research important ideas and
exercise valuable writing or verbal presentation skills.
Discussion Questions: After the movie, be prepared to answer the following questions:
Choose ONE
1. Prosecutor DeLaughter asserted that reopening the wound left by the Medgar Evers’
assassination and retrying a 70 year old man, cleansed the wound and allowed it to
finally heal, rather than to fester and poison future generations. How did the retrial help
to heal the wounds and injustice or how did the retrial unnecessarily opened old
wounds? Three paragraphs. Complete with research.
 Intro- grabber, background and claim
 Address the prompt
 Conclusion- reflection
2. What did the assassination of Medgar Evers have in common with the tradition of
lynching that had taken the lives of thousands of black people over the years since the
Civil War?
 Research the word “Lynching” and add that to your answer.
 Also, print out a copy of the poem “Strange Fruits” and analyze ( analysis
protocol) the poem and then write an analysis in one paragraph.
3. The film captures the truth of the Evers’ murder and in most respects is strikingly
accurate. There are a few historical inaccuracies.
 Choose three of the following list of inaccuracies and write a brief paragraph on
why you think the film’s writers chose to distort some details used to tell the
story.
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Conclude your paragraph with an opinion about whether you, as the
screenwriter, would have been creative with the facts:
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The window of prosecutor DeLaugher’s car was not smashed and painted with a
swastika.
The meeting in the courthouse men’s room between de la Beckwith and
prosecutor DeLaughter didn’t happen.
While there was a telephone threat that the DeLaughter house would be
bombed, the DeLaughers did not flee their home in panic.
It was District Attorney Peters and not DeLaughter who cross-examined the alibi
witness, a powerful part of the courtroom drama.
DeLaughter’s parents were generally supportive of him in the investigation and
he was never a member of a country club.
DeLaughter did not sing “Dixie” to his daughter to put her to sleep.
The news conference after the verdict took place in an empty courtroom, not on
the court house streets.
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4. Create a well-researched time line of specific incidents in which you calculate the
changes in the South between 1963, the year of Medgar Evers’ birth, and 1989, the year
that de la Beckwith was finally found guilty of murder. Write a conclusion that suggests
the importance of these years in terms of changing Mississippi to a state in which
Medgar Evers’ widow and family receive justice. Include:
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Medgar Evers’ death
MLK death
When lynching became illegal
What was the first case of a white man being convicted of killing of killing a black
man?
Civil Rights movement
When the death penalty for rape was abolished
When women got the right to sit on a jury
When the death penalty could only be assigned by a judge
Any other facts that seem Important to the development of the South.